Solactive is pleased to announce the release of the Solactive L&G Gender in Leadership UK Index used as the basis for the L&G Future World Gender in Leadership UK Index Fund (“GIRL”), the first gender-oriented fund to exclusively focus on UK-listed companies. This launch is the result of collaboration between Solactive and Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM), which combines LGIM’s proprietary scoring system – the L&G Gender Diversity Score – with Solactive’s expertise in the development of thematic indices. With this new launch, Solactive further expands its range of gender-based indices by exclusively covering the UK equity market for the first time.

Using the Solactive GBS United Kingdom All Cap Index as starting universe, the index strat- egy adopts a gender-based weighting scheme, assigning more weight to companies with a higher L&G Gender Diversity Score. This score integrates four dimensions of gender diver- sity. These include the percentage of women on the board, at the executive level, at the management level, and across the workforce. Companies are expected to reach a mini- mum of 30% representation of women on these four measures.

TimoPfeiffer,Head of Research at Solactive, commented: “Wearevery excited about this index launch, as this is the first time we are teaming up with LGIM. As an all cap index, the Solactive L&G Gender in Leadership UK Index can be used to track the performance of gen- der diversity among UK-listed companies and gain more exposure to those with better scores.”

The Solactive L&G Gender in Leadership UK Index is denominated in GBP and available in three versions: price return (PR), net total return (NTR), and gross total return (GTR). The index is composed of 349 companies, with Finance, Consumer Non-Durables, as well as Consumer Services and Energy being the most represented sectors. The gender metrics are reviewed annually in order to incorporate the most reliable and relevant inputs when cal- culating the L&G Gender Diversity Score.